Restless Dream, Special Place
Start "Go long!" shouted a voice from across one of the many packed Warehouse aisles. This was followed by a red and black frisbee zooming over, clearing almost an entire section before a leather-bangled hand reached impossibly high over a shelf and plucked it out of the air. "Back at you!" called back another voice as the frisbee made the return trip, making it most of the way back before a young woman launched herself with superhuman dexterity into the air to catch it. "Nice catch, Claude!" Claudia landed with unnatural grace then whipped around to fling the disc again. "Target, get it buddy!" She flung the frisbee once more as a small red fox darted over the aisles after it, tongue hanging out of his mouth. The toy dinged off a shelf and a large sign, causing him to whip around after it. ---- From his office Artie heard the unmistakable and, now that the Warehouse was filled with more young adults than ever before, increasingly frequent, sound of things falling off shelves. He sighed, not even looking up as he redirected the neutralizer sprinklers to the appropriate section and activated them with a single button push. He gave a small satisfied smirk as he heard the static burst of dozens of suddenly gooed artifacts and the shriek of someone who was unlucky enough to be caught in the purple shower. ---- "What in the absolute...!" shouted Felix as he picked himself up off the floor, his dark hoodie drenched in viscous goo. Claudia and Nikki sheepishly wandered around the corner. Target followed, looking very pleased with himself with the frisbee in his mouth. Felix glowered at them. "Extreme artifact Frisbee." Nikki said meekly. He looked at the disc in Target's mouth and groaned. "C'mon guys, you should at least know that if you use Brodie's frisbee then you should do it outside. At least Morrison's cake pan wouldn't be so destructive." "Sorry Felix," said Nikki, taking the toy from Target. "We'll take it outside. Or maybe a more open section. You can go back to your nap. Or...maybe a shower. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of used neutralizer started to fill the air. Normally unremarkable, a large amount of static could give it a nasty burnt rubber aroma. "Ugh, yeah, I think I will. Thanks for that..." Felix snidely commented as he turned and stalked off to his office apartment. The girls waited until he was gone before bursting into laughter. "I swear, he always chooses to nap in the worst places!" said Nikki, after it subsided. "It's freaky, like he knows exactly where the worst place to be is and stays anyway." replied Claude. "I guess we should keep keep our word though. We did make kind of a big mess, and I bet Artie's on his way to make us clean it up." Nikki nodded in agreement and followed Claudia further into the aisles, towards the football stadium neither had thought to ask about before. Target hopped energetically behind them. None of them noticed the thick fog that began to roll in, trailing in both directions after the retreating agents. Felix Felix shut off the water and stepped out of the shower, steam billowing in the small bathroom. He cocked his head. *''Clank...Thud...Clang...Thud''* The sounds continued, coming from his adjoining office. He sighed, dried himself off, and threw on the first clothes he grabbed. He shuffled into his office to see a black satin baby carriage, shackled to a bar on the wall, desperately straining against its chains and bouncing against the bounds of its small enclosure. "What has you worked up?" Felix muttered to himself as he reached for the Goo sprayer, silencing the agitated artifact in a shower of grey sparks. Felix made a mental note to add this new behavior to his files as his eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. Almost 8, probably time to get Target back inside. He grabbed his Farnsworth to contact Claudia or Nikki. "What in the hell...?" he said aloud as the Farnsworth opened, not to the face of another agent, but a screen of static drowned out by unusually loud white noise. He gave the device a few whacks and, having no effect, He flicked the device closed. The sound died instantly and he sighed to himself as he grabbed his keys, striding out the door to find the troublemakers the hard way. The steam in his bathroom continued to roil, growing thicker and flowing into the office and out into the aisles after him. Claude, Nikki and Target Target did a mid-air pirouette, snatching the frisbee out of the air and flinging it back at Claudia in one fluid motion. She caught it with a perfectly executed triple forward flip and ricocheted it at Nikki, who cleanly caught it by stretching her arm a good twelve feet from her body. As her limb returned to its normal length she glanced at her wristwatch. "Oh, it's nearly 8 Claude. We should get Target beck to Felix before he starts stressing." Claudia did an immaculate forward tumble, leading into a mid-air corkscrew and nailed the landing right beside Nikki. She pulled a tight blue hairband from her head and dropped it into a small silver bag. Once the tiny burst of sparks died down Nikki removed the sweatbands from her wrists and they joined the first artifact in the bag. As Claudia tucked the bag into her pocket, Nikki looked around the stadium they'd been playing in. "Hey Claude, is one of this artifacts effects something to do with fog?" she asked, slightly apprehensively. "Nah, just makes sure the Lions don't win the Superbowl. Pete calls it the "Curse of Bobby Layne" or something. Why?" Claudia looked up, past the bright stadium lights that had illuminated their game. In the distance, where the light didn't penetrate, was a thick ash-grey fog that seemed to hang motionless in the air. "Alright, that's properly spooky..." she said, pulling out her Farnsworth. "Maybe we accidentally activated something in the crash. I'll see if Artie has an alert." As soon as the device was flipped open a loud burst of white noise echoed around the vacant stands, causing both girls to jump. Target yelped and recoiled at the sound, his head whipping around as his eyes fixed on one of the player entrances. Nikki and Claudia followed his gaze, eventually making out a figure shuffling towards them in the fog. "Must be Felix, looking for Target." Nikki reasoned as Claudia shut the noise off by closing the device. Target, however, seemed terrified. He yelped again at the slowly approaching silhouette, then turned and bolted across the field. The girls couldn't react quick enough to catch him and could only watch in dismay as he vanished through another entrance on the opposite side of the pitch. "What's got into him?" asked Claudia. "It's like he was running for his life or something. Why would he want to get away from Felix like that?" She turned to Nikki, waiting for a response. Nikki, however, wasn't looking at the spot Target had escaped. Her eyes were fixed in horror the shape they had prematurely assumed was their fellow agent. "Claude," she said slowly, panic in her voice, "I really don't think that's Felix..." Garrett Target didn't stop running until he was several sections away from the stadium. His human mind, the consciousness of Garrett, came back to him through the fog of panic. For a few minutes, as he cowered under a rather attractive dining table, only one coherent thought was repeating in his head. Evil, not Felix. Bad, not Felix. Dangerous, not Felix. Finally, Garrett managed to suppress the animal instinct that came with being reanimated as a fox, an unfortunate side effect he'd learned the first time he'd found himself thoughtlessly chasing Pete the ferret through the grounds of the B&B. "That," ''said the voice in his head, "''wasn't human. It was wrong. Smelled like fire. Smelled like pain and fear and hate." ''Even in his current form his natural empathetic powers shone through. He could taste emotions in the air. "You're not wrong," said another voice, identical to his own but not from his mouth. Scott, part of his psyche brutally ripped into his own persona, still invaded his thoughts sometimes. The odd comment, emotion, even seeing someone different in the mirror for a split second when he looked, these were just parts of his life Garrett had learned to cope with since his revival. He'd kept them to himself, no need to worry Felix with that information after all the effort he'd gone to bringing him back. But this time was strange. Garrett heard the click of a lighter. "Pain and fear and hate all through." it said again, and Garrett turned his furry head to the side. Sitting at one of the matching dining chairs, flicking Freud's lighter on and off, was Scott. "Looks like everything came back with you." he said with a sinister grin. His face was covered in dried brown blood and his ginger hair caked with ash and tar. If he had his human mouth, Garrett would have screamed. All he could do was yelp louder than he'd ever before as he turned tail and ran through the oppressive fog, away from the nightmarish doppelganger and towards what he hoped was Felix. Nikki and Claudia Every shaky step closer gave the girls a clearer view of the warped figure. Clearly humanoid but grotesquely malformed, straps of rotting skin bound its arms tight to its side and only a black lipless mouth on its otherwise featureless face. Claudia wasted no time whipping a Derringer-sized Tesla pistol from her pocket, aiming it squarely at the creature. "What the fuck is that?" asked Nikki, face paling and voice shaking slightly. "Hold it, ugly!" Claude shouted at the figure. Despite her own pale face, her hand was steady. The creature continued its staggered walk forward, a faint gurgling sound coming from the formless hole in its head. It reared back suddenly and lurched forward, heaving thick tar-like vomit at the agents. They recoiled as it hit the ground, sizzling loudly between them. Claudia grabbed Nikki's hand. 'Get back to the office!" she shouted, turning toward the exit Target had escaped through. As the pair took off across the field, Claude fired off a shot from the Tesla. It hit the beast square in the chest, causing it to convulse violently. It shrieked as it vomited its acidic bile over its thrashing body, causing Nikki to look back and swear violently. Five more identical creatures had begun to stagger into the light as the girls rounded a corner and escaped into the aisles. Felix Felix was on alert almost instantly when the door to his office violently slammed shut behind him. The Warehouse was darker, the shelves seemed more barren. The persistent fog he'd assumed was just the dissipating steam from his shower was certainly not normal. Even though the shelves were almost empty, save for a few crates and tarp-covered objects, the fog was so dense he couldn't see more than a row across. After if became obvious his door was not going to reopen, even with his keys, he glanced around for some protection. He'd never trusted his aim with a Tesla or Sabine and finally settled on a broken shelf support that was jutting out at a dangerous angle. It was positioned in a way that made it difficult to ignore, something he would definitely have noticed on his way in. He wrenched it from the rest of the shelf and weighted it in his hands, giving it a few practice swings. His slightly pointed ears twitched. In the distance he had definitely just heard a yelp. Loud, panicked and unmistakably Garrett. With the bar held like a sword at his side he sprinted off into the aisles. Shapes began to move in the fog around his workshop, their pale white shells having hidden them from view. They started following Felix with jerky, robotic movements. Artie Five alerts going off at once. Artie nearly tripped down his spiral stairs as he rushed into the office. One was normal, two was rare. Any more usually meant an intrusion-level event. He hammered away at his keyboard, bringing up a large scrolling map of the Warehouse. Alert one was at Felix's workshop. That was so normal he'd considered muting that months ago. Rarely was it something serious and not an errant explosion or static buildup. Alert two was at the intersection he'd doused earlier. More worrying, but it's possible an artifact had become a bit agitated and had begun acting up. Alerts three and four were more concerning. One at the Detroit Tiger Stadium, which was stored for archival purposes and had no real active effects to speak of, and one a few aisles away that meant someone was sitting at Pierre Desloges' Dining Table despite the warnings. It was number 5 that made him swear quietly, however. Not because it was particularly dangerous artifact, but because he'd never seen that sort of alert before in his long, very extensive, Warehouse career. Claudia & Nikki "What the fresh hell was that thing?" cried Nikki as the duo rushed through aisle after aisle of thick fog. "Why would I know that?" replied Claudia as they rounded another abnormally bare set of shelves and finally came to a stop to catch their breath. "It was like something from one of those horror movies Tyler loves." Nikki said, clutching her sides. "All twisted and mutated. And it looked like it was wearing a straitjacket, like they used to use in old asylums..." She looked over at Claudia, who had gone very pale. "Sorry," she said meekly. "I forgot you've got some experience with that..." "I'm fine!" Claudia snapped, causing Nikki to flinch back slightly. Claudia must have noticed. "Sorry, didn't mean to go off like that." she said, a bit softer. "Just bad memories and stuff I don't want to go into again." She huffed exasperatedly. "This place really doesn't like letting people forget the things they'd really rather think about." "Three parts wonder, one part never-ending torment." Nikki agreed. Claudia took a deep breath and rewound the changer on her Tesla. 'We should keep moving until we find someone." she declared, and Nikki nodded in agreement. "Maybe Artie can tell us what's going on, or why the Farsnworth isn't working." "And we should really find Target." Nikki interjected. "If we find Felix first and he finds out we let him run off while those ''things are on the loose, I don't know who I'd rather have to deal with, him or them." Felix Felix stopped at a crossroads. One direction would lead him towards the Dark Vault. Even if every other station was down, that would still have a working SOS signal powered by its internal generator. But he'd heard the yelp coming from the other direction, where he knew there was nothing except a bunch of furniture artifacts that backed into one of the Warehouse's few colossal walls. He grimaced at the decision, then turned to make towards that Dark Vault. If Target was in trouble then it would be more pragmatic to get as much help as possible first. He barely took a few steps before the buzzer on his Farnsworth went off, scaring him more than he'd ever admit. He flipped it open and put on his best "you didn't see that" face, but was disappointed to be met with the same obscenely loud static as last time. He was about to flip it closed when he made out some faint words coming through. "Artifact disturbance...five alerts...stadium...don't know..." It was Artie's voice, distorted but clear enough to make out. "Artie, this is Felix!" he shouted into the device. No reply, so he tried fiddling with some of the knobs on the side that had been explained to him several times, but he'd never quite figured out the use of. There was no real change until he hit frequency 94.5. There the voice changed. "Not my dad...don't care...for a walk..." Felix froze. The voice coming from the speakers wasn't possible. It was the last argument they'd had before the incident, and the last time he'd seen him alive. Felix flinched again as the deafening sound of car tires burning out became metal smashing and rending as it crashed against a streetlight. He hadn't been there at the time, but it sounded exactly like it did in his nightmares. There was silence for a while. No static, just the sound of blood rushing through his ears. In the distance he could hear a siren. Police or ambulance, he couldn't tell. Then he went very cold. The Farnsworth was off now, he'd flipped it shut without thinking when he'd heard the crash. But the siren was still approaching. The Farnsworth buzzed again and he hesitantly opened it. The screen was still a mess of white noise, but one sentence came out very clearly in the voice of his dead fiance. "Behind you...Run." Target Target rounded another corner, blinded by the vision-obscuring fog around him. He could only see a few feet ahead, but his sense of smell was proving useful. Every now and then he'd make a diversion to avoid some more of the lumbering creatures from the stadium or pick up the telltale scent of burnt flesh and double around. He didn't even know where he was or where he was heading, his only goal was to escape from the oppressive feeling of dread that surrounded him. He skidded to a halt by a smooth white wall, fairly new looking despite the char and scarring all over it. The Dark Vault, recently renovated, stood in his way. He yipped softly and tried to turn back, only to spin around and be faced with Scott. Only a few feet away, still flicking the lighter on and off. To his sides more creatures hobbled towards him. "Back against the wall, lapdog?" he taunted smugly. "Come over here and we can stop the chase. You let me out once. Now let me in again." Target cowered into a ball, yelping desperately as Scott reached towards him with an ichor-coated hand. But the contact never came. There was a loud dull thud against the wall Target was pressing himself against, like a rock thrown against sheet metal. Scott flinched and looked around in confusion. Another thud. And another. Scott backed away slightly as the wall of the Dark Vault started to bulge outwards as something smashed against it from the opposite side. Target took the chance to dash under an aisle as a mass of cement and steel burst through the wall. Vaguely human shaped with stone fists attached swinging wildly at the monsters. They vomited some foul-smelling liquid at the statue but it seemed to have no effect. Another flail of its bludgeoning arms left the beasts broken on the floor. Target peeked out of his hiding spot to get a better look at his savior. It looked like a store mannequin made of coarse cement, missing chunks showing a skeleton of steel cables. Its arms were grotesquely stretched and ended with the brutal wrecking-balls that had crumpled the other creatures like paper. It seemed to have frozen in place now that the treat had passed and Target noticed that Scott wasn't among the carnage. Target cautiously emerged from under the aisle to approach his defender when it suddenly snapped back to life. It turned what could be called its "head" to look at him, a misshapen hunk of stone with a crude children's drawing on it approximating a woman's face. The statue lifted a fist with surprising speed and only missed Target by a hair as it slammed down. The head turned to follow his movement as the beast wound up another strike, fixated on the small fox which was darting around it. Making a quick decision Target hopped away from the next meteoric slam and dived into the gaping hole the creature had left. Dashing into the recesses of the Dark Vault, Target whipped his head around to see the concrete woman slump in defeat, its bulky frame completely blocking the jagged opening. Artie Another blaring alarm in Artie's office was met with more quiet cursing from the aging caretaker. "Dark Vault, too? What in God's name is going on down there?" he muttered to himself. "Why the light show, Artie?" called Steve's voice from the Umbilicus as he, Tyler, and Aden entered. Artie gruffly gestured them closer as he pointed at the screen, almost unreadable with the amount of popup warnings covering it. "We have a situation." Artie replied. 'Or rather many situations which I hope are related." Steve stared at the warning that was baring front and center. "Lustrous Alert?" he asked quizzically. "What's that one?" Aden and Tyler glanced at each other before Aden spoke up. "A while ago Artie wanted Claudia to install some kind of detection system for spacial and temporal anomalies in the Warehouse. Apparently it was becoming too frequent for him. So she asked me and Juan for help on what to look for and I suggested some...uh..."nerdy" names for the alerts." Steve cocked an eyebrow. "Nerdy?" "Pokemon." clarified Tyler. "Ah. So which one is "Lustrous"?" "It means," Artie interjected, "something down there has created a dimensional distortion, and I think Nikki, Claudia and Felix are trapped in it." Nikki and Claudia The girls had been sprinting through the Warehouse for what seemed like forever, finding no end to the barren shelves and oppressive fog. Every so often Claudia would have to fire at another straitjacket-wearing monstrosity to keep moving forward. "Did you hear that?" Claudia asked, putting an arm up to stop Nikki running past. Nikki tilted her head to try and better hear the sound the was faintly piercing the thick fog. "Sounds like...sirens?" she asked. "Maybe it's a Warehouse alert picking up on all this?" Claudia shook her head. "I've set off every alarm in this place at least a few times, and this one isn't one of them. Sounds almost like an ambulance to me..." "If I've got my directions right, Felix's office should be over that way. Something going on there maybe?" She went slightly pale. "Crap, you don't think he's stuck in this...whatever-it-is as well, do you?" Claudia's face hardened. "We need to get to higher ground and check things out." she said, sprinting down another row of shelves. "There should be an access stairway to the catwalks at the entrance to every section." The pair rounded another corner. Only a few feet ahead of them was a rusted spiral staircase, but before they could get to it something made them freeze. The sound of tires squealing against cement was speeding towards them through the white haze, crashing against the shelves with deafening bangs as is approached. Moving fast, the girls dashed towards the stairs at full speed, jumping on just as the burnt and rusting car pealed through the spot they'd just been standing. They could just make out the thick smoke pouring from the windows and the mangled mass of cloth and metal bursting through the windshield before it was gone, drifting around another corner and vanishing into the unseeable depths of the Warehouse. The girls glanced quickly at each other then clamored in unison up the stairs. The fog was thinner up on the catwalk and, from their new vantage point, they looked out over the Warehouse. They could see the fog below parting as the demon car made it's way into the distance, towards the pole that marked one of the ends of the zipline. "That thing is heading for Felix's office." Nikki said, pointing out at where the small shack should be. "We've got to go warn him!" She turned to Claudia only to see she was looking in the opposite direction, her eyes wide. "Bigger problems..." she said meekly, and Nikki looked over at where she was staring. The walls of the Warehouse were gone, replaced by a black void criss-crossed with girders and walkways. Where Artie's office should have been, its black and red branches twisting up into the beams of the Warehouse ceiling, was a colossal tree. "You think that's what's causing all this horror-movie fuckery?" Nikki asked when she found her voice. "It sure as hell wasn't there this morning, and if Artie vetoed Abi's houseplants in the office, he'll be really pissed about this." Claudia replied. Nikki glanced back over at the trail being cut through the fog as the car screeched closer to Felix's home. "We can't just leave Felix and Target though. We have to at least warn them." Claudia's eyes lit up and she dug through her satchel for a few seconds. "I'll need your Sabine." she said to Nikki, pulling out a handful of small green army men. "Are those the one's Artie confiscated from Pete?" Nikki asked, unholstering her sidearm and handing it over. "He told me to put them back, but he never said I couldn't use them if I wanted to." She stuffed a as many into the barrel as she could fit, then aimed it out towards Felix's. "50/50 chance they'll go off in the gun?" she asked hesitantly. Nikki covered her ears and ducked away as Claudia fired, the blast of sound launching the toys across sections of shelves. Moments later they exploded in a shower of red, white and blue fireworks, the light briefly illuminating the sea of white. "Should wake him up, if nothing else." Nikki said, lowing her hands. "I hope they're alright." Claudia handed her back the Sabine. "We'll check later. Right now we need to get to Artie's treehouse and see what the hell is going on!" Nikki gave a curt nob and the two dashed off across the catwalks. At the spot they'd just moved from, a single noose dropped from above. Another joined it soon after. Then dozens. They hung silently for a few seconds, swaying in the non-existent wind before retracting back up. Category:Felix Draco Category:Claudia Donovan Category:Artie Nielsen Category:Nikki Nola Category:Garrett Scott Category:Prof.draco